One cannot imagine a place abandoned by God. Yet that is Calvary. And that is hell.
When speaking of some desolate location on earth, people will describe it as a “God-forsaken place.” But David explained that, in reality, no such place exists. He asked: “Where can I flee from Your presence?…If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there Your hand shall lead me, and Your right hand shall hold me” (Ps 139:7-10). And yet in God’s moral universe, there is such a place. We see it hinted at in the words prophesied as coming from the Lord Jesus in His agony: “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Ps 22:1). Both Matthew (27:46) and Mark (15:34) tell us that Jesus quoted these very words from the cross. That was the one God-forsaken place, when Jesus took the place we deserved. What must it mean to be forsaken by the God who is everywhere? This was pictured on the great Day of Atonement when we read about the scapegoat: “The goat shall bear on itself all their iniquities to an uninhabited land” (Lev 16:22). The word “all” occurs three more times in the previous verse: “all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions, concerning all their sins.” What a heavy load was borne by our Azazel when He became “the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world” (1 Jn 2:2). Yet for those who reject Christ’s offer to be their sin-bearer, the same God-forsaken land awaits. They will hear the Lord Jesus Himself say to them, “I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!” (Mt 7:23). This is what it means to perish—to be unknown by the God who knows everything, and to be sent away from the God who is everywhere. So if you have not yet trusted the Savior, please do it today!